ResearchTalk

Sound familiar?

From TechDirt’s Mike Masnick.

NOTE: This article will only make sense if you’ve received this month’s Research World mag.

When I wrote this slightly provocative piece for Research World (link only active during Nov ‘09) based on my feeling that quallies lacked ambition, I fully expected criticism and counter arguments.

Now, I did get a few folks telling me they agreed with the central tenets of my argument, namely that quallies weren’t innovating as much as they could be, or as much as entrepreneurs from outside the market research industry or some quant. firms.

But I didn’t get any criticism. Until now. And it’s come from an unexpected quarter: Simon Chadwick, editor-in-chief of Research World itself.

Here’s what Simon wrote:

…In the qualitative arena, however, we are seeing developments that perhaps come closer: collaborative research, ethnography and co-creation all feature heavily of accounts of development in qualitative. Indeed, Lewis and van der Wal conclude that co-creation can actually lead to increased brand loyalty, so perhaps there are hidden benefits to the ‘new’ qualitative!

Despite this, Surinder argues that innovation in qualitative research appears to be rather linear, as opposed to what is going on in quant. which he characterises as exponential. It is not often that I disagree with my old friend Surinder, but this is one of those times.

Simon is indeed a friend. But, hey, friends can disagree with one another.

You see, my target was the folks in the traditional part of the qualitative industry. That’s why I referred in my title to ‘quallies’ and not the ‘qualitative industry’.

Just as Simon does, I talk up the range of wonderful developments in areas such as neuroscience, biometrics and mass ethnography. But I then make this point:

You’ve [quallies] made a good start with those hybrid techniques. But some of the most interesting and potentially successful developments are arguably coming from ‘outsiders’ – entrepreneurs in quantitative and from outside the industry.

By which I was referring to developments in neuroscience which is being popularised by marketing ‘guru’ Martin Lindstrom. And the fact that quant. behemoth Nielsen has recently invested in Neurofocus (interestingly, Nielsen CEO David Calhoun sits on their board so this investment is clearly not casual). And the fact that online quant. agency BrainJuicer is experimenting with mass ethnography to scale its analogue cousin.

Simon’s core point is that quallies have been instrumental in these new developments. That may be the case but why aren’t they more prominent? Why aren’t they gunning to be the next Nielsen? That’s right, I absolutely think they should be building the next $1bn research company. If that sounds ridiculous for a qual. company then that’s not what I’m talking about; I’m talking, as Simon does in his piece, about a company that infuses deep and rich qualitative understanding into a scale business. It would be the ultimate research company. And it’s the ambition of a number of companies I know of. None of which do any significant level of traditional qual.

The difference of opinion may be one of vantage point. In any case, I still believe, in a positive way, that quallies aren’t ambitious enough. As I conclude in the piece…

Radical change is happening whether we like it or not. You have the talent, resources and nurturing environment to take advantage of that. Use that power wisely.

In the final part of our series on talent and development Danny talks about some trends he’s seeing in HR.

Trends such as employer branding, social networking, technology as both liberator and jailer, and the rise of blended learning.

We hope you’ve enjoyed the series and found it useful, inspiring or both. If you’ve missed any parts or simply want to revisit them then pop here for the archive.

We’d like to thank Danny for doing this series. Find out more about the wonderful training and development work he does by popping over here.

This podcast accompanies our article in the Oct ‘09 edition of ESOMAR’s Research World. Grab your copy here.

I had the privilege of chatting with inventor, entrepreneur and futurologist Ray Kurzweil recently. Here’s the full conversation in podcast form. (The full writeup will appear in October’s issue of Research World.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Watch this episode of web video show Scam School, which focuses on the tricks memory can play. Afterwards, think again about whether you should always believe what consumers say.

If you want to see another example of this in practice, in a case that had very sad consequences, check out this 60 minutes story and accompanying video.

TechCrunch50 in San Francisco is fast becoming one of the premier places to launch a technology startup if you’re looking for exposure, customers or funding.

In fact, one of the companies that presented at the inaugural event a couple years ago just announced that they had been bought for a considerable sum.

So we were watching the live stream of this year’s event when the startup Affective Interfaces started to pique our interest.

Based on the work of facial coding expert Paul Ekman (recently popularised in the hit TV series Lie to Me), AI has built a system that monitors facial expressions in real time and on a mass scale (via webcams). They claim the system provides a much more accurate and sensitive indication of, among other things, an ads. likelihood of success.

The presentation didn’t go as well as it could have done – the presenter spent too much time talking and not enough time showing ‘compelling’ videos. But then, in a scene reminiscent of Dragon’s Den, a couple of judges on the expert panel started to recognise the potential. Those enlightened judges were publishing entrepreneur Tim O’Reilly and senior Google exec Bradley Horowitz.

But while these judges know tech, they’re not experts in human behaviour. So we decided to get Jai Haissman, AI’s founder and CEO, to chat with Conquest Research’s David Penn, someone who knows a thing or two about the reliability of interpreting emotions and non-verbal cues. This is a pretty geeky podcast, but we hope you find it stimulating nonetheless.

Affective Interfaces is keen to reach out to potential partners, customers and funders (they’re self-funded). We regard them as an exciting addition to the world of new research and so encourage you to engage with them (as you’ll hear in the podcast they’ve already had a good amount of interest from the event).

VCs and corporate M&A folk: this could become a very special company.

 STARRING 

• Jai Haissman, founder and CEO, Affective Interfaces
• David Penn, MD, Conquest Research

Read the rest of this entry »

In a continuation of the theme in part 5, Danny looks at how to measure performance in a meaningful and useful (actionable) way.

He says, for example, “What is the point…of knowing that each individual employee receives on average 5.5 training days a year. So what? Could you get a similar impact with fewer training days…doing something else?”

It contains more useful questions, tips and tricks if you’re a manager or help to manage talent. You can find all the previous episodes here.

Find out more about Danny here.

Our article in the Sep ‘09 edition of ESOMAR’s Research World. Grab your copy here.

Sony founder, Akio Morita, once said: “Curiosity is the key to creativity.” So, given how curious researchers are, we decided to speak to some client-side researchers to discover ways in which they have used creativity to amplify the value of research.

 
The Listener
Dr. Simon Roberts, Lead, Design/Social Science, Digital Health Europe, Intel

Roberts’ solution has been to turn some of his findings and insights into well-produced booklets and brochures, something he did for a recent global ageing study with hundreds of in-depth interviews: “Let’s put it all in a booklet and make sure that every person in the organisation for whom this is relevant gets a copy on their desk. We can also use it externally to tell a story about our work.”

Pop here for the rest of the article – available only for a limited time – and do subscribe to Research World magazine.

Dan Pink speaking at this year’s TED Global in Oxford.

He takes us through a wealth of evidence – built up over four decades – which demonstrates that financial incentives tend to focus the mind and as such only tend to be productive on left-brain tasks, i.e. “problems with a clear set of rules and a single solution.”

In contrast, when financial incentives are offered to people to solve more right-brain tasks – those that are more conceptual in nature and require greater use of cognitive power – the incentives actually make the problem harder to solve because they narrow the focus when the solution tends to be on the periphery and so the solver needs to be thinking more holistically and laterally.

The issue, says Pink, is that we’ve known about these flawed links between problem-solving and financial incentives for decades, and yet despite that they endure. And more and more of the work we do is shifting to right-brain thinking as we delegate the routine, rule-based stuff to computers and outsourcing agents.

The solution: offer incentives based on intrinsic motivators. Specifically, autonomy (e.g. Google’s 20% time), mastery, and purpose.